Arielle
My boyfriend is balls deep in my best friend of five years, doggy style to be precise.
I leaned against the door, gripping it for support, staring in earth shattering shock and disbelief at the scene before me. Susan had her head thrown back, her chestnut brown hair splayed over her back, falling out of the purple hair clip I gave her last Christmas while my boyfriend dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips and drove into her from behind.
The sounds were the worst part. Skin slapping against skin filled the room.
"Right there-" she gasped, fingers clawing at the bedsheets. "God, Nick, right fucking there-"
She hadn't bothered to muffle the sounds. Why would she? She thought I was on campus having a lecture.
I never came over on a Monday afternoon but Professor Dallas cancelled lectures for today and I… oh god, I had thought to come hang out at her place.
Susan's place. The apartment I had a spare key to. The couch where we had cried together when her mother was diagnosed, where she had held me after the accident six months ago and whispered you're going to be okay, Ari, I've got you.
That couch was three feet from where she was currently screaming on her bed with my boyfriend inside her.
"Yeah?" Nick's voice was low, rough and completely unrecognizable. It was nothing like the voice he used with me. "You want it harder?"
"Yes…" Susan moaned and my knees wobbled at the sound.
Tears burned the corners of my eyes, my eyelids fluttering rapidly to keep them from falling. I had spent two years playing referee between these two. Forty times at least, probably more. Dragging them back from the edge of each other's throats at every gathering, every single time they were in the same room.
"He's insufferable," Susan would hiss the moment Nick left the room. "Arielle I am telling you, that man has the emotional depth of a parking ticket."
"He's so full of himself," she'd groan, flopping onto my bed. "Every time he opens his mouth I want to staple it shut. How do you kiss that mouth? How? I would rather kiss a cactus."
"Nick Henderson is the most arrogant, self-absorbed, brainless pretty boy I have ever had the misfortune of breathing the same air as," she declared once, completely unprompted, while we were eating ice cream and watching a movie. I had laughed so hard I cried.
I wasn't laughing now.
"He's a pig," she told me just last week, scrunching her nose. "A conceited, insufferable pig and you deserve so much better, Ari. Truly."
Her lips were not curling in disgust now.
My bag slipped from my arm, I barely felt it fall. A hand shot up to clamp over my mouth. This couldn't be happening.
No, maybe I was back on campus having a terrible nightmare. Susan wouldn't do this to me. This was the same girl who had shown up at my dorm at 2am with chocolate and terrible reality TV the night Nick and I had our worst fight.
The same girl who knew about the nightmares, who knew what my father had said to me the night of my tenth birthday when I had done the one thing that could never be undone, who had never once used any of it against me. She wouldn't—
"I'm gonna cum, Nick," she squealed, throwing her head back. "I'm gonna cum all over your cock!"
Something hot and burning filled my bones, chasing every last drop of shock.
"You crazy whore!"
The sounds stopped, for a full second. Both of them glanced at the door, eyes widening as they finally, finally noticed me. My entire body trembled and buzzed with rage.
"Ari!" Susan gasped, rearing up quickly. Nick gave a grunt as she slid away from him and off the bed. She grabbed a sheet, gripping it against her body and a bitter laugh bubbled up my throat.
She was covering herself from me? Me? Like I was some intruder who had no business seeing her. She had just been screaming with my boyfriend's dick inside her. When did this start? How long had they been doing this?
Was every eye roll, every insult, every dramatic speech about how much she despised him nothing but a performance?
Did it start when I had that accident six months ago? Before? While she was holding my hand in that hospital bed, was she already sampling my boyfriend's dick in bed?
"A-Ari…" Susan stuttered, swallowing hard. She took a step forward, tripping over the sheets wrapped around her.
I dragged my eyes from her face to Nick. He sat against the headboard, reaching for his phone on the bedside table as if all of this was completely, perfectly normal.
How could he be so nonchalant? We had been dating for almost two years. I gave him two years. Our fathers had arranged it and I had agreed, and somewhere in those two years I had made the catastrophic mistake of actually falling for him.
"You're fucking him," I whispered, clenching my hands into fists. "What's there to explain, Susan? I just saw my boyfriend's dick buried inside you. What else is there to say?!"
She hurried towards me. "I… I'm sorry—"
I slapped her hands away before they could reach me, my skin crawling. "Don't touch me, you traitorous bitch!"
"Would you quit your yelling?" Nick grumbled and my jaw dropped. I turned my head slowly, eyes wide. He remained on the bed, blue eyes looking thoroughly bored as they flicked between me and his phone screen.
"E-Excuse me?"
"You heard me." He scoffed, finally setting the phone down with the energy of someone who had been mildly inconvenienced.
"What else did you expect, Ari? You were never a good fuck. Starfishing on your back and calling it sex. I had to get my pleasure somewhere worth having it."
For a moment my head went light and I closed my eyes to keep the room from spinning. Never a good fuck? He couldn't even find my clit if it had a neon sign and a personal tour guide and I was never a good fuck?
"And it just had to be my motherfucking best friend?!"
Susan winced and it only incensed me further.
"I told you to stop yelling," Nick snapped.
"I just found you cheating on me, you bastard, you do not get to tell me what to do," I spat, reaching down to snatch my bag off the floor.
My hand tightened around the handle for one brief second before I hurled it at him. It fell a few meters from the bed with a flop and the dam of tears I had been desperately holding back finally broke.
"How long?" I croaked, turning to Susan. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
The girl I had spent the better part of my life with, my Susan, dropped her eyes to the floor.
"I'm sorry Ari, I really am—"
"HOW LONG?" My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it.
She pressed her trembling lips together, refusing to look at me. That silence said everything. This was not the first time. Not the second or the third. If she could not even tell me how long, they had been making a fool of me for longer than I could stomach.
"Arielle, I'm sorry. Truly—"
"Take your pathetic apology," I hissed through my teeth, fighting the sob clawing up my throat. "And shove it up your ass. You're going to need it since his tiny dick clearly won't reach."
"Real mature, Ari," Nick chuckled, unbothered.
I fixed him with the dirtiest look I had and stormed forward to collect my bag.
"This relationship is over. I never want to see you again."
"Tell that to your daddy, baby girl."
He unfolded himself from the bed slowly, completely unbothered by his own nakedness, and that bothered me more than anything. That complete, practiced absence of shame.
My fingers clenched. I wanted to scratch that smug, pretty look clean off his face. Nick had always been tall. I had always liked that about him. Now he used every inch of it as he towered over me and I hated myself for the small step I took backwards.
He leaned down, bringing his face level with mine, close enough that I could smell his cologne on his skin, the same cologne I had bought him for his birthday.
Light blonde hair draped across his forehead. I had once thought I would spend forever kissing that face. I was such a fool.
"We both know this isn't in either of our hands, Ari." His voice dropped to something almost gentle, which was somehow worse.
"Daddy would be so very displeased to hear his good little girl is throwing away everything he carefully arranged." The smirk deepened, slow and deliberate.
"Wouldn't he? How do you think that conversation goes? 'Sorry Daddy, I threw away the man you chose for me because my feelings got hurt?'" He clicked his tongue.
"He'll laugh you out of the room, sweetheart."
"You're a pig, Nick. A small, pathetic, insecure little pig who needed his daddy to hand him a girlfriend because he couldn't keep one on his own merit," I spat directly into his face, slammed the bag hard into his stomach and turned around to get the hell out.
"Always so dramatic, Arielle!" he called after me, amusement thick in his voice. "It's not that serious! You should be thanking me, at least one of us was getting properly satisfied!"
"Ari!" Susan's voice cracked behind me.
I did not stop. I could not stop. If I stopped I would crumble completely and I absolutely refused to crumble anywhere they could see me. A thick lump sat heavy in my throat as I flew down the stairs, rushed through the lobby and nearly ran face first into the glass door at the entrance.
The California evening sun had absolutely no business being this bright, burning hot on the back of my neck as I rushed to my car.
My keys. Where were my— I dumped my bag on the hood, hands shaking, my vision tunneling as my fingers finally closed around the keys just as the first real sob cracked out of me.
Nick was right. That was the thing that destroyed me most. Not just the cheating, not just Susan, but the fact that he was right and he knew it and he had watched my face crumble knowing it.
Dad already had a long, carefully maintained list of reasons to be disappointed in me. I had been building it since the night of my tenth birthday, since I had done the one unforgivable thing and looked up to find my father's face twisted into something I had never seen before and have never been able to forget.
You. What have you done. Not even a question. Just four words that rewrote everything between us and never stopped echoing.
I dropped my face into my palms and cried harder, not caring that I was standing on the sidewalk in broad daylight.
Every decision, every compromise, every time I had pushed down what I wanted and done what was expected instead. Every time I had swallowed my opinions at dinner and smiled prettily and been the good daughter, right down to Nick Henderson and his two years of my life.
"And look where that got me."
I straightened up, dragging the back of my hand across my wet cheeks. I was done being daddy's obedient daughter, Nick Henderson's boring girlfriend.
Being a good girl never paid anyone.
I unlocked the car and slid inside.
If Nick could be a stupid, smug cheater without a single drop of guilt, then tonight, Arielle Smith was done being a good girl.
Tonight, I was getting revenge sex. And I was going to enjoy every single second of it.